Conference aims to normalize pedophilia

If a small group of psychiatrists and other mental health
professionals have their way at a conference this week, pedophiles
themselves could play a role in removing pedophilia from the American
Psychiatric Association's bible of mental illnesses -- the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), set to undergo a
significant revision by 2013. Critics warn that their success
could lead to the decriminalization of pedophilia.

The August 17 Baltimore conference is sponsored by B4U-ACT, a group
of pro-pedophile mental health professionals and sympathetic activists.
According to the conference brochure, the
event will examine "ways in which minor-attracted persons [pedophiles]
can be involved in the DSM 5 revision process" and how the popular
perceptions of pedophiles can be reframed to encourage tolerance.

Researchers from Harvard University, the Johns Hopkins University,
the University of Louisville, and the University of Illinois will be
among the panelists at the conference.

B4U-ACT has been active attacking the APA's definition
of pedophilia in the run up to the conference, denouncing its
description of "minor-attracted persons" as "inaccurate" and
"misleading" because the current DSM links pedophilia with criminality.

"It is based on data from prison studies, which completely ignore
the existence of those who are law-abiding," said Howard Kline, science
director of B4U-ACT, in a July 25, 2011 press release. "The proposed
new diagnostic criteria specify ages and frequencies with no scientific
basis whatsoever."

The press release announced a letter the group sent to the APA
criticizing its approach, and inviting its leaders to participate in
the August 17 conference. "The DSM should meet a higher standard than
that," Kline continued. "We can help them, because we are the people
they are writing about."

APA spokeswoman Erin Connors told The Daily Caller in an emailed
statement that her organization was not participating in the conference
and would not comment on its aims.

Child advocate Dr. Judith Reisman, a visiting professor at Liberty
University's School of Law, said the conference is part of a strategy
to condition people into accepting pedophiles.

"The first thing they do is to get the public to divest from
thinking of what the offender does criminally, to thinking of the
offender's emotional state, to think of him as thinking of his
emotional state, [and] to empathize and sympathize," Reisman said. "You
don't change the nation in one fell swoop; you have to change it by
conditioning. The aim is to get them [pedophiles] out of prison."

According to Reisman, empirical data show that pedophiles typically
molest many children before finally being caught.

"The data on paroled pedophiles confirms these predators repeat
their crimes against children and are known to have escalated them even
to murder," Reisman said.

"What purpose does calling someone a 'pervert' or 'predator' serve
anyway, other than to express contempt and hatred?" Kramer wrote
in a March 14, 2009 blog entry on the website
ReformSexOffenderLaws.org. "How is this productive? It certainly
doesn't protect children. I would urge all SO [sex offender] activists
to listen to their own message: Stop buying into and promoting false
stereotypes. Stop demonizing a whole class of people, and start
learning the facts."

Berlin has similarly compared society's reaction to pedophilia to
that of homosexuality prior to the landmark 2003 Lawrence v. Texas
decision that decriminalized sodomy.

B4U-ACT's own website puts Berlin's views front and center. "Just as
has been the case historically with homosexuality," he writes, "society
is currently addressing the matter of pedophilia with a balance that is
far more heavily weighted on the side of criminal justice solutions
than on the side of mental health solutions."

Berlin's opposition to, and even noncompliance with, Maryland's sex
offender notification law drew scrutiny from former Maryland Attorney
General J. Joseph Curran in the early 1990s.

In 1990 The Baltimore Sun reported that Berlin
refused to report pedophiles under his care who were actively molesting
children.

In an emailed statement to TheDC, Berlin distanced himself Monday
afternoon from other B4U-ACT conference participants' stated aims,
saying that he opposes removing pedophilia from the DSM and that he
hopes to stop pedophiles before they act.

Berlin also disputed Reisman's contention that he wants to
decriminalize pedophilia, noting that "society's interests can best be
served by supporting both criminal justice interventions and public
health initiatives."

Reisman remains unconvinced. "His empathy was with the pedophile and
the pederast, not with the child victim," she told TheDC. "He refused
to report the criminal to law enforcement because he said they were in
treatment.

"Taxpayers pay for treatment and they are molesting kids. They go
out to Berlin, and he gets paid by us [the taxpayers] for therapy."

Reisman also claims that mental health practitioners like Berlin
want to place pedophilia on a par with neuroses or clinical depression,
and counsel pedophiles rather than incarcerate them.

"The scientific defense of pedophiles follows on the natural
outgrowth of ... [Alfred Kinsey's] 1948 book 'Sexual Behavior of the
Human Male' where he describes the rapes of infants and children, as
would any pedophile, as 'orgasmic,'" Reisman said.

Reisman warns that declassifying pedophilia as a mental illness
could result in the repeal of child-protection statutes because the law
always follows the input of psychiatry. She points to psychiatry's
normalization of sadomasochism, exhibitionism, and homosexuality as
precedents.

"[I]t has been carried from the university to the law, going back to
Kinsey," Reisman said.

And other conference panelists such as Jacob Breslow, a graduate
student in gender research at the London School of Economics, plan to
discuss how political activists can exploit removing pedophilia from
the next edition of the DSM for their own ends.

"Allowing for a form of non-diagnosable minor attraction is
exciting, as it creates a sexual or political identity by which
activists, scholars and clinicians can better understand Minor
Attracted Persons," Breslow writes in a summary of his
upcoming August 17 presentation.

"This understanding may displace the stigma, fear and objection that
is naturalized as being attached to Minor Attracted Persons and may
alter the terms by which non-normative sexualities are known.